Rolls-Royce shares a rich heritage of partnership with the Indian defence forces, dating back over eight decades when it powered the country’s first air force and navy carriers. Today, over 750 Rolls-Royce engines across 10 engine types power Indian military aircraft.

Collaboration has been at the heart of this partnership, demonstrated by successfully transferring whole-engine capability, knowledge and expertise in multi-national combat engine programmes. Over the past 60 years, Rolls-Royce engines have been made in India, under license by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), the largest defence manufacturing company in India and a public sector company. Rolls-Royce has also built successful partnerships with leading private sector players like Bharat Forge, Godrej & Boyce, Force Motors and the Tata group and MSMEs and start-ups.

The vision for the future will be not just technology transfers and manufacturing but creating a broader ecosystem that includes co-design, co-development, co-manufacturing, supply chain and support. This entails capability creation and skilling, and at Rolls-Royce we consider this one of our core strengths. In India, we are already nurturing skills, developing local supplier base and building capabilities to match global standards of quality and delivery.

With a growing engineering footprint in India, we seek to establish a robust ecosystem to enable co-creation across the entire value-chain – from research, design and development to manufacturing, integration, maintenance and repair.

Going forward, we seek to embrace opportunities to co-develop and co-manufacture for the growing aerospace and defence sector with the right Indian strategic partners.  This way we not only create value and contribute to local economies but also create an ecosystem that enables the sustainable growth of the sector.

How do you see India as a market for marine engines? Do you have any future plans, like the GSL partnership, in the naval applications?  

The global marine engines market is projected to grow at a healthy rate based on factors such as growing marine freight transport and tourism, but we also foresee strong growth in defence and security sector applications led by a challenging global geo-political environment.




India’s long coastline of 7,517 kilometres and the new global geo-strategic environment demands a stronger Indian Navy than ever before. The rapid modernisation of the modern Indian Navy to improve its position in the vital Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is testimony to this shift. To be sure, the Indian Navy is a cohesive three-dimensional force capable of operating above, on and under the surface of the oceans.

Rolls-Royce products are aligned with India’s defence policy in the army, navy and air force segments. We are firmly committed to serve the needs of the Indian Navy and are keen to customise our advanced technology products to best serve the navy’s power needs. Our involvement in naval propulsion spans 50 years and has seen the company pioneer some of the most important technical advances in marine propulsion including the use of aero gas turbines for surface ship propulsion.